Black Lives Matter protesters marching on the Minnesota state fair on Saturday spewed violent anti-cop rhetoric just hours after a Harris County, Tex. sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and executed at a Houston-area gas station.
“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” activists with the St. Paul, Minn. branch of Black Lives Matter chanted while marching behind a group of police officers down a highway just south of the state fair grounds.
Carrying signs reading “End White Supremacy” and “Black Lives Matter,” the protesters railed against racial inequality, the criminal justice system and policing. Besides issuing the chant calling cops by the pejorative “pig,” the protesters repeated the names of several blacks who have been killed by police in recent years.
The activists sang out the violent chorus chant just hours after a lone gunman shot 47-year-old Harris County sheriff’s deputy Darren Goforth while he was getting gas. The suspect approached the 10-year veteran from behind at around 8:30 p.m. Friday and shot him in the back of the head. He then shot Goforth several more times as he lay on the ground.
The latest Des Moines Register poll is out today and it gives a boost to the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Dr. Ben Carson.
Sanders inched closer to Hillary Clinton 37-30 while Ben Carson drew nearer to Donald Trump 23-18. A significant result in the poll shows Carson and Trump tied when you factor in voters' first and second choices combined.
The poll result on the Democratic side will add a couple of levels of anxiety for Democrats over the sinking Hillary Clinton campaign, which now appers close to being in free fall.
Poll results include Vice President Joe Biden as a choice, although he has not yet decided whether to join the race. Biden captures 14 percent, five months from the first-in-the-nation vote Feb. 1. Even without Biden in the mix, Clinton falls below a majority, at 43 percent.
"This feels like 2008 all over again," said J. Ann Selzer, pollster for the Iowa Poll.
In that race, Clinton led John Edwards by 6 percentage points and Barack Obama by 7 points in an early October Iowa Poll. But Obama, buoyed by younger voters and first-time caucusgoers, surged ahead by late November.
In this cycle, Sanders is attracting more first-time caucusgoers than Clinton. He claims 43 percent of their vote compared to 31 percent for Clinton. He also leads by 23 percentage points with the under-45 crowd and by 21 points among independent voters.
Sanders, a Vermont U.S. senator, has become a liberal Pied Piper in Iowa not as a vote against Clinton, but because caucusgoers genuinely like him, the poll shows. An overwhelming 96 percent of his backers say they support him and his ideas. Just 2 percent say they're motivated by opposition to Clinton.
Back in January, half of likely Democratic caucusgoers were unfamiliar with Sanders, who has been elected to Congress for 25 years as an independent. He has jumped from 5 percent support in January to 30 percent. Clinton, a famous public figure for decades, has dropped in that period from 56 percent to 37 percent.
"These numbers would suggest that she can be beaten," said Steve McMahon, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns dating to 1980.
To support his insane interpretation of the post-Civil War amendments as granting citizenship to the kids of illegal aliens, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is now taking job applications for the nonexistent -- but dearly hoped-for -- Jeb! administration, live, during his show.
(Apparently my debate with O'Reilly will be conducted in my column, Twitter feed and current bestselling book, Adios, America, against the highest-rated show on cable news.)
Republicans have been out of the White House for seven long years, and GOP lawyers are getting impatient. So now they're popping up on Fox News' airwaves, competing to see who can denounce Donald Trump with greater vitriol.
Last Thursday's job applicants were longtime government lawyers John Yoo and David Rivkin.
In response to O'Reilly's statement that "there is no question the Supreme Court decisions have upheld that portion of the 14th Amendment that says any person, any person born in the U.S.A. is entitled to citizenship ... for 150 years" -- Yoo concurred, claiming: "This has been the rule in American history since the founding of the republic."
Yes, Americans fought at Valley Forge to ensure that any illegal alien who breaks into our country and drops a baby would have full citizenship for that child! Why, when Washington crossed the Delaware, he actually was taking Lupe, a Mexican illegal, to a birthing center in Trenton, N.J.
If one were being a stickler, one might recall the two centuries during which the children of slaves were not deemed citizens despite being born here -- in fact, despite their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents being born here.
Incongruously, Yoo also said, "The text of the 14th Amendment is clear" about kids born to illegals being citizens.
Wait a minute! Why did we need an amendment if that was already the law -- since "the founding of the republic"!
An impartial observer might contest whether the amendment is "clear" on that. "Clear" would be: All persons born in the United States are citizens.
What the amendment actually says is: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
The framers of the 14th Amendment weren't putting a secret trap door in the Constitution for fun. The "jurisdiction thereof" and "state wherein they reside" language means something. (Ironically, Yoo -- author of the Gitmo torture memo -- was demonstrating that if you torture the words of the Constitution, you can get them to say anything.)
At least Rivkin didn't go back to "the founding of the republic." But he, too, claimed that the "original public meaning (of the 14th Amendment] which matters for those of us who are conservatives is clear": to grant citizenship to any kid whose illegal alien mother managed to evade Border Patrol agents.
Whomever that was the “original public meaning” for, it sure wasn’t the Supreme Court.
To the contrary, the cases in the first few decades following the adoption of the 14th Amendment leave the strong impression that it had something to do with freed slaves, and freed slaves alone:
-- Supreme Court opinion in the Slaughterhouse cases (1873):
"(N)o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments), lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him."
-- Supreme Court opinion in Ex Parte Virginia (1879):
"[The 14th Amendment was] primarily designed to give freedom to persons of the African race, prevent their future enslavement, make them citizens, prevent discriminating State legislation against their rights as freemen, and secure to them the ballot."
-- Supreme Court opinion in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880):
"The 14th Amendment was framed and adopted ... to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that, under the law, are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment whenever it should be denied by the States."
-- Supreme Court opinion in Neal v. Delaware (1880) (majority opinion written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was the only dissenting vote in Plessy v. Ferguson):
"The right secured to the colored man under the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws is that he shall not be discriminated against solely on account of his race or color."
-- Supreme Court opinion in Elk v. Wilkins (1884):
"The main object of the opening sentence of the 14th Amendment was ... to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black, and whether formerly slaves or not, born or naturalized in the United States, and owing no allegiance to any alien power, should be citizens of the United States ... The evident meaning of (the words, "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof") is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. ... Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterward, except by being naturalized ..."
One has to leap forward 200 years from "the founding of the republic" to find the first claim that kids born to illegal immigrants are citizens: To wit, in dicta (irrelevant chitchat) by Justice William Brennan, slipped into the footnote of a 5-4 decision in 1982.
So to be precise, what Yoo means by the "founding of the republic," and Rivkin means by "the original public meaning" of the 14th Amendment, is: "Brennan dicta from a 1982 opinion."
Perhaps, if asked, the Supreme Court would discover a "constitutional" right for illegal aliens to sneak into the country, drop a baby, and win citizenship for the kid and welfare benefits for the whole family. (Seventy-one percent of illegal immigrant households with children are on government assistance.
But it is a fact that the citizenship of illegal alien kids has never been argued, briefed or ruled on by the Supreme Court.
Yoo and Rivkin aren't stupid. It appears that the most significant part of their analysis was Yoo's legal opinion: "I don't think Trump is a Republican. I think actually he is ruining the Republican Party." Please hire me, Jeb!! (or Rubio)!
O'Reilly could get more reliable constitutional analyses from Columba Bush than political lawyers dying to get back into government.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee–In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, GOP front runner Donald Trump is firing back at the Club for Growth.
“They’re a pack of thieves,” Trump told Breitbart News as he was leaving Nashville’s Rocketown facility. He had just finished delivering a high-energy speech to an overflow crowd of more than 1,000 people.
Trump was attending the annual convention of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, which describes itself as “the grassroots Republican wing of the Republican Party.”
“They [the Club for Growth] came to my office looking for money. I turned them down. That’s why they’re after me,” Trump told Breitbart News.
Earlier in the week, the Club for Growth attacked Trump for his proposal to penalize Ford Motor Company for putting a car manufacturing plant in Mexico rather than Tennessee.
“Donald Trump’s threat to impose new taxes on U.S. car companies will hurt the American economy and cost more American jobs,” David McIntosh, President of the Club for Growth, said in a statement.
“It should thrill liberals and Democrats everywhere that Trump wants to create new taxes and start a trade war to force American companies to work where he demands,” McIntosh added.
Trump stopped specifically to address Breitbart’s question as he moved down the exit aisles surrounded by throngs of supporters.
“I love Breitbart News. This is going to be a good question,” Trump said.
Trump did not pull any punches when asked if he had a message for the Club for Growth in response to its attacks.
Other candidates might shy away from calling out their critics so bluntly as “a pack of thieves,” but for Trump it was just another opportunity to take the battle to the opposition.
None of the assigned readings view attacks from perspective of Sept. 11 victims’ families
An English class offered at UNC Chapel Hill this fall called “Literature of 9/11” explores the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the perspective of radical Islamists and those who view America as an imperialist nation.
The reading assignments for the class, which includes poems, memoirs and graphic novels, present terrorists in a sympathetic light and American political leaders as greedy, war hungry and corrupt, according to a review by The College Fix.
The readings mostly focus on justifying the actions of terrorists – painting them as fighting against an American regime, or mistaken idealists, or good people just trying to do what they deem right. None of the readings assigned in the freshman seminar present the Sept. 11 attacks from the perspective of those who died or from American families who lost loved ones.
MINNEAPOLIS — Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to cement her standing as the rightful leader of the Democratic Party here Friday, but two of her challengers launched a fierce counterattack against her and a party establishment they see as trying to hand her the 2016 presidential nomination.
What began as a routine forum of candidate speeches evolved into a surprisingly dramatic day at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley issued thinly veiled attacks on Clinton and the party leadership.
Speaking from the dais, with DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz sitting a few feet away, O’Malley blasted the party’s limited number of sanctioned debates as a process “rigged” in favor of the front-runner. The DNC is holding six debates, only four before February’s first caucuses in Iowa, which O’Malley argued is a disadvantage for all the candidates and a disservice to Democrats generally.
“This sort of rigged process has never been attempted before,” said O’Malley, who has struggled to gain traction in the polls. He added: “We are the Democratic Party, not the undemocratic party.”
Sanders — who later told reporters he agreed with O’Malley — lamented low Democratic turnout in last year’s midterm elections and said the party must grow beyond “politics as usual” if it hopes to produce the level of voter enthusiasm required to retain the White House in 2016.
Democratic presidential candidate and senator Bernie Sanders on Friday called for taking on “the economic and political establishment.” (Craig Lassig/Reuters)
“We need a movement which takes on the economic and political establishment, not one which is part of that establishment,” said Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats in the Senate.
Asked later whether he was speaking specifically about Clinton, he told reporters, “I’ll let you use your imagination on that.”
The barbs from Sanders and O’Malley came as Clinton and her campaign flexed their organizational muscle here. The front-
runner and her top aides worked aggressively behind the scenes this week to secure commitments from party leaders pledging to be delegates for her in next summer’s nominating convention in Philadelphia.
Clinton’s organizational push sent a clear signal to Vice President Biden, who has been weighing a late entry into the 2016 campaign, that he would begin far behind her.
The refusal of some Texas counties to issue birth certificates for children born to undocumented parents could threaten the state's relationship with Mexico, the Mexican government warns.
The notice comes in a brief filed in support of illegal immigrant parents who are suing Texas after being denied birth certificates for their U.S.-born children – even after providing ID cards, known as "matricula," issued by the Mexican Consulate, Fox News Latino reports.
The Texas Tribune reports some Texas county registrars won't accept the consulate-issued identification because it isn't considered reliable.
Some Texas counties were accepting the consulate ID cards until recently, when they were ordered to stop by the Texas state health services department, the Tribune reports.
"[It] not only jeopardizes their dignity and well-being, but could threaten the unique relationship between Mexico and Texas," the Mexican government said in a brief tied to a lawsuit filed against the state by Texas Civil Rights Project and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.
The suit against Texas was filed on behalf of six children who are U.S. citizens and their undocumented parents, who are from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, the Texas Tribune reports. The families argue Texas is violating the 14th amendment, among other things.
"Our argument isn't 'yes matrícula, no matrícula,'" attorney Jennifer Harbury, who represents the families, told the Tribune. "The argument is 'what will you take that people can actually get?' They have to take something. [The children] were born here. They are U.S. citizens."
The brief also claims denying the children U.S. birth certificates blocks their claims to Mexican citizenship; a child born to Mexican parents has that right but must show proof of identity, the Tribune reports.
In 1983, as the U.S. confronted the threat posed by the Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan explained America’s unique responsibility. “It is up to us in our time,” he said, “to choose, and choose wisely, between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.” It was up to us then—as it is now—because we are the exceptional nation. America has guaranteed freedom, security and peace for a larger share of humanity than any other nation in all of history. There is no other like us. There never has been.
Born of the revolutionary ideal that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights,” we were, first, an example to the world of freedom’s possibilities. During World War II, we became freedom’s defender, at the end of the Cold War, the world’s sole superpower. We did not seek the position. It is ours because of our ideals and our power, and the power of our ideals. As British historian Andrew Roberts has observed, “In the debate over whether America was born great, achieved greatness or had greatness thrust upon her, the only possible conclusion must be: all three.”
No other nation, international body or “community of nations” can do what we do. It isn’t just our involvement in world events that has been essential for the triumph of freedom. It is our leadership. For the better part of a century, security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political and diplomatic might. For the most part, until the administration of Barack Obama, we delivered.
Since Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed us the “Arsenal of Democracy” in 1940, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have understood the indispensable nature of American power. Presidents from Truman to Nixon, from Kennedy to Reagan, knew that America’s strength had to be safeguarded, her supremacy maintained. In the 1940s American leadership was essential to victory in World War II, and the liberation of millions from the grip of fascism. In the Cold War American leadership guaranteed the survival of freedom, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism. In this century it will be essential for the defeat of militant Islam.
Yet despite the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an Islamic State caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia, President Obama has departed from this 75-year, largely bipartisan tradition of ensuring America’s pre-eminence and strength.
He has abandoned Iraq, leaving a vacuum that is being tragically and ominously filled by our enemies. He is on course to forsake Afghanistan as well.
He has made dangerous cuts to America’s military. Combined with the sequestration mandated in the Budget Control Act of 2011, these cuts have, according to former Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno, left the Army as unready as it has been at any other time in its history. Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert has testified that “naval readiness is at its lowest point in many years.” According to Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh, the current aircraft fleet is “now the smallest and oldest in the history of our service.”
For seven decades, both Republican and Democratic presidents have understood the importance of ensuring the supremacy of America’s nuclear arsenal. President Obama seems not to. He has advocated cutting our nuclear force in the naïve hope that this will persuade rogue regimes to do the same. He has imposed limits on our ability to modernize and maintain nuclear weapons. He has reduced the nation’s missile-defense capabilities.
He says that he is committed to preventing nuclear proliferation. For more than 45 years, presidents of both parties have recognized that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is vital in this effort. Signed by 190 countries, including Iran, the NPT has been arguably the single most effective multilateral arms-control agreement in history. President Obama stands ready to gut it. Among the many dangerous deficiencies in his nuclear deal with Iran is the irreversible damage it will do to the international nonproliferation regime contained in the NPT.
Allowing the Iranians to continue to enrich uranium and agreeing to the removal of all restraints on their nuclear program in a few short years virtually guarantees that they will become a nuclear-weapons state, thus undermining the fundamental agreement at the heart of the NPT. President Obama is unraveling this international structure as part of an agreement that provides a pathway for the world’s worst state-sponsor of terror to acquire nuclear weapons.
Nearly everything the president has told us about his Iranian agreement is false. He has said it will prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but it will actually facilitate and legitimize an Iranian nuclear arsenal. He has said this deal will stop nuclear proliferation, but it will actually accelerate it, as nations across the Middle East work to acquire their own weapons in response to America’s unwillingness to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
President Obama told us he would never accept a deal based on trust. Members of his administration, including his secretary of energy and deputy national-security adviser, said the nuclear deal would be verifiable with “anywhere, anytime” inspections. Instead, the Obama deal provides the Iranians with months to delay inspections and fails to address past clandestine work at military sites. Inspections at these sites are covered in secret deals, which is historic, though not in the way the president claims. Under the reported provisions of the secret deals, the Iranians get to inspect themselves for these past infractions. Inevitably these provisions will be cited by the Iranians as a precedent when they are caught cheating in the future.
The president has tried to sell this bad deal by claiming that there is no alternative, save war. In fact, this agreement makes war more, not less, likely. In addition to accelerating the spread of nuclear weapons across the Middle East, it will provide the Iranians with hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, which even the Obama administration admits likely will be used to fund terror. The deal also removes restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program; lifts the ban on conventional weapons sales; and lifts sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, on the Quds Force, and on Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. Under Mr. Soleimani’s leadership, the Quds Force sows violence and supports terror across the Middle East and has been responsible for the deaths of American service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A vote for the Obama nuclear deal is not a vote for peace or security. It is a vote for an agreement that facilitates Tehran’s deadly objectives with potentially catastrophic consequences for the United States and our allies.
The Obama nuclear agreement with Iran is tragically reminiscent of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement in 1938. Each was negotiated from a position of weakness by a leader willing to concede nearly everything to appease an ideological dictator. Hitler got Czechoslovakia. The mullahs in Tehran get billions of dollars and a pathway to a nuclear arsenal. Munich led to World War II. The Obama agreement will lead to a nuclear-armed Iran, a nuclear-arms race in the Middle East and, more than likely, the first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The U.S. Congress should reject this deal and reimpose the sanctions that brought Iran to the table in the first place. It is possible to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon, but only if the U.S. negotiates from a position of strength, refuses to concede fundamental points and recognizes that the use of military force will be required if diplomacy fails to convince Iran to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.
As America faces a world of rising security threats, we must resolve to take action and shouldn’t lose hope. Just as one president has left a path of destruction in his wake, one president can rescue us. The right person in the Oval Office can restore America’s strength and alliances, defeat our enemies, and keep us safe. It won’t be easy. There is a path forward, but there are difficult decisions to be made and very little time.
We are living in what columnist Charles Krauthammer has called “a hinge point of history.” It will take a president equal to this moment to lead us through. America needs a president who recognizes that everything the nation must do requires having a U.S. military with capabilities that are second to none—on land, in the air, at sea, in space and in cyberspace. The peace and security of the world and the survival of our freedom depend on it. We must choose wisely.
“I think it’s just wrong,” Walker said. “…Even though I don’t know Senator Cruz as well as I know some of the governors, I’ve grown to like him and admire him quite a bit out on the campaign trail.”
“Does this rhetoric help at all in the party, when people are slamming each other left and right like this?” host Hugh Hewitt asked.
“No, it doesn’t at all,” Walker said. “Particularly at a time when so many Americans, rightfully so, are frustrated that we can’t get things done in Washington. I’m frustrated.”
MSNBC has announced a plan to turn away from left-wing opinionating and towards hard, objective news coverage. The network has been cratering in the ratings for years but just now figured out that left-wing talk radio-with-pictures hosted by male and female Rachel Maddow clones isn’t a ratings-grabber. The Wrap reports that three unnamed MSNBC anchors resent the change:
Network insiders told TheWrap at least three of the network’s anchors — two of them higher-profile — are not on board with network chairman Andrew Lack and president Phil Griffin’s daytime overhaul from progressive firebrand to traditional news format.
“Hard news is a mistake,” one insider told TheWrap of direct conversations with one anchor.
Another anchor has said in public that Lack and Griffin have a fundamental misunderstanding of MSNBC’s audience.
“Older people aren’t eager to get their news from people like Ronan Farrow or Chris Hayes,” the anchor told TheWrap’s insider.
The Wrap adds that part of the internal frustration is over the fact that MSNBC does not appear ready to change it’s left-wing primetime line-up with Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Chris Matthews. Only daytime will move to a hard news format.
The cable bundle is misunderstood. While analysts and pundits focus on when the cable bundle will finally succumb to Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), HBO, and Hulu, the reality is the future of television will be built on the video bundle's back. Due to attractive economics, video bundles are one of the best values in the media space and will remain the dominant way we receive premium video content. We are quickly approaching the point where Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) can capitalize on market dislocation to destroy the modern-day big cable bundle with a leaner bundle that is built to thrive in a mobile world.
Video Bundle Economics
The cable bundle has been one of the best consumer deals in the modern era. By subsidizing content's true cost, the bundle makes it possible for consumers to receive a vast amount of video content for an artificially low monthly price. The bundle works marvelously well as long as everyone pays into the system, and this has been the case for the last 20 years. Nielsen estimated there were 116 million homes with televisions in the U.S., of which approximately 100 million had some form of pay TV for the 2014-2015 TV season. ESPN is one of the most widely distributed cable networks, reaching 95 million homes. ESPN has a farther reach than Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), a testament to how much power the cable bundle holds.
While the video bundle will remain relevant for many years, the content associated with the bundle will change. New companies have relied on the old bundle parameter, namely, selling a wide range of content to as many people as possible to carve out a piece of the subscription video streaming market. Companies like Netflix, HBO, and Hulu sell video bundles. Instead of charging viewers by individual shows and series, these companies charge for access to a wide selection of content appealing to a range of consumers.
Most cable networks are in existence today because of the large cable bundle. Without the bundle, these networks would not be able to fund their current slate of programming. The mistake many people make when analyzing the bundle is to ignore the value of access. Having a window to nearly 100 million households is in many ways more lucrative than the pennies or nickels that the average channel receives from each household each month. This is a cable distributor's key selling point, and we often see fighting between content owners and distributors over access.
The Trickiness in Going Direct to Consumer
When contemplating the future of television, many have thought the strongest cable networks can one day bypass the large cable bundle and sell their programming direct to consumer. For simplicity's sake, I position ESPN and AMC as the poster children of this theory. In the current system, ESPN receives approximately $6 per month from every household subscribing to cable. AMC receives quite a bit less, approximately $0.50, although it is still well above the average $0.15 received. If ESPN and AMC were to leave the bundle and embrace the direct to consumer model, they would need not only to make up lost subscriber fee revenue, but also contemplate losing access to 100 million households. AMC relies on that access to sell new series, like "Fear the Walking Dead," to viewers. "Fear the Walking Dead" just became the highest-rated series premiere in cable TV history thanks to AMC's reach. ESPN also benefits from grouping sports programming into one channel, appealing to a much wider fan base, including those who may only watch a game or two each month.
There is no question that the best networks will have loyal fans ready to pay top dollar for a direct to consumer option. However, that won't be enough since these networks are simply not built to support such a model. It will be very difficult for ESPN and AMC to stop subscribers from signing up for their content only to watch their favorite series or sports season and then cancel their membership afterwards. With the cable bundle, such month-to-month volatility does not exist.
I am very skeptical that a cable network will be able to go 100 percent direct to consumer. The economics are just not in their favor. Instead, a hybrid approach may work although in many instances, the best case scenario would be to just get to a point that matches the current large cable bundle. There is much incentive on the part of cable networks to make the bundle work.
Time for Action
The mobile revolution has weakened the large cable bundle's fundamental underpinning. Mobile hasn't changed just the way we communicate, but also the way we create and consume content. Having new types of video content in our pocket has led us to no longer sit in a particular room at a particular time to watch a particular show. As smartphones continue to grow in screen size, all other pieces of smart glass in our lives, including our television sets, will lose value and importance.
The old definition of TV doesn't do justice to the much wider array of available content that we now have at our fingertips. As smartphone adoption grew, the idea that anyone could be a content creator became reality. While YouTube may still lead in terms of mindshare when thinking of user-generated content, we also have plenty of interesting content found on video-sharing networks like Vine, Snapchat, and Periscope, not to mention premium content from the likes of Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu, and Amazon.
One example of an entirely new form of content that people are increasingly turning to is vlogs, which is short for video blogs. The following Google Trends chart highlights vlogging's expanding popularity. The vlogging industry, notorious with young people chronicling their daily activities, is still in its infancy. Vlogging combines elements of reality TV with scripted television as many vloggers record real-life situations although the heavy use of editing and some pre-planning suggest there are also elements of a regular sitcom.
Bloomberg host John Heilemann said Friday that new revelations about the Clinton Foundation are causing concern among those close to Hillary Clinton, who thought controversy surrounding the political charity had finally subsided.
“This story coming back has a lot of people nervous, because it’s something a lot of folks who are around her thought was behind them, and now it’s back again,” Heilemann said.
ABC News reported Friday morning that Bill Clinton asked the State Department for approval to give lucrative speeches in two of the world’s poorest and most brutal regimes, Congo and North Korea.
The former president has made over $100 million from speeches since leaving office in 2001, sometimes from foreign government and business interests.
Some of his most lucrative speeches were delivered while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, a fact which has raised questions about whether organizations sought to influence State Department policy by paying the Clintons.
Heilemann noted that this intriguing discovery about Bill Clinton, and concurrent discoveries about Clinton aide Huma Abedin, were drawing attention away from Hillary Clinton’s burgeoning email scandal.
“For the past few weeks, the political world has been fixated on Hillary Clinton’s emails, but now two stories have changed the subject—and not in a good way,” Heilemann said.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which PJ Media’s J. Christian Adams is president, has done admirable work in convincing the country that voter fraud is a widespread problem and an embarrassment to the country. We need clean voter rolls and Voter ID now, and an end to this cavalier attitude towards securing our fundamental right.
Scores of Counties Put on Notice About Corrupted Voter Rolls
(Alexandria, VA) – August 27 The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has put 141 counties on notice across the United States that they have more registered voters than people alive. PILF has sent 141 statutory notice letters to county election officials in 21 states. The letters are a prerequisite to bringing a lawsuit against those counties under Section 8 of the federal National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
The letters inform the target counties that it appears they are violating the NVRA because they are not properly maintaining the voter rolls. The NVRA (also known as Motor Voter) requires state and local election officials to properly maintain voter rolls and ensure that only eligible voters are registered to vote. Having more registrants than eligible citizens alive indicates that election officials have failed to properly maintain voter rolls.
States with counties which received a notice letter are (# of counties): Michigan (24), Kentucky (18), Illinois (17), Indiana (11), Alabama (10), Colorado (10), Texas (9), Nebraska (7), New Mexico (5), South Dakota (5), Kansas (4), Mississippi (4), Louisiana (3), West Virginia (3), Georgia (2), Iowa (2), Montana (2), North Carolina (2), Arizona, Missouri, New York (1 each). Federally produced data show the letter recipients have more registrants than living eligible citizens alive. (A sample letter is can be found here.)
Lawyers for PILF have previously brought lawsuits against other counties that failed to clean up voter rolls after receiving a notice letter. The notice letters also seek access to public information about voter roll maintenance efforts. The United States Justice Department also can bring lawsuits to fix corrupted voter rolls but has failed to do so during the Obama administration.
“Corrupted voter rolls provide the perfect environment for voter fraud,” said J. Christian Adams, President and General Counsel of PILF. “Close elections tainted by voter fraud turned control of the United States Senate in 2009. Too much is at stake in 2016 to allow that to happen again.”
The Public Interest Legal Foundation will monitor responses by the 141 counties and remedial clean-up efforts. Federal law requires that a party sending a notice letter wait 90 days before filing a lawsuit. The entire list of counties who received the notice letter can be found here.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), (formerly Act Right Legal Foundation), is a 501(c)(3) public interest law firm dedicated to election integrity. PILF exists to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections. Drawing on numerous experts in the field, PILF seeks to protect the right to vote and preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections. Media inquiries: media@publicinterestlegal.org. Click here for a copy of this release.
